Otto Sump
Otto Stump is a hideously unattractive citizen turned entrepreneur. He was known for being extremely friendly and wanting to help people - this familiar nature grated on Judge Dredd. Biography Sump was left at the steps of a Face Change clinic when he was a baby. His mother served time for abandonment and then had to take him back. (His father had taken one look at him at birth and run away) Due to his ugliness, none of the other juves wanted to play with him and his mother grew to resent him.Megazine 4.12 As an adult, he got a job as a rat scarer at the sewage treatment plant until animal rights groups complained. He was such a sad sack that Dredd used him as part of a sting: he competed on a game show called Sob Story, where the public sent in money to the person with the saddest life story. Dredd caught the criminals who were targeting Sob Story winners and Sump was left a multi-millionaire. Prog 132 Deciding to make sure nobody would be as ugly as him, he opened a chain of beauty clinics. Since he wanted to do the work himself - and was incompetent - he made his customers uglier. This accidentally started a fad. Young, attention-seeking citizens competed to look uglier and uglier to stand out in the crowd. This made Sump decide that 'ugly was beautiful' and that he'd work to make the world an 'uglier' place. progs 186 to 188 The Judges slapped a tax on ugly products to manage it, so only the rich could buy products. Sump suffered in Mega-City One but expanded his line abroad.Prog 188 Eventually, the proliferation of unsafe black-market ugly products forced Justice Department to lift the tax. Megazine 4.12 With the money from this, Sump went into other industries. After the Apocalypse War he sold Gunge, an ersatz food made from disgusting ingredients and waste. It was found to be not only safe to consume, but twice as nutritious as Munce. Unfortunately, social disorder made the Judges ban it (and then repurpose it as bland Justice Dept approved rations that didn't list ingredients). Later, to sell a so-called intelligence-enhancing sweet called "Smart Candy". The trick was that the ads didn't claim they actually did anything and even said "You gotta be dumb to buy 'em". The unamused Judge Dredd found an excuse to shut this business down when a group of particularly stupid criminals claimed that Smart Sweets gave them the intelligence to plan a crime. With his wealth, Sump followed his promise: he was a major donor to charity, friendly and helpful to all he met, and kept tracking his mother down to try and look after her in her old age (repressing that she despised him). He got married to a (bad) air-dancer, showering her with affection and ignoring her bad dancing. (She would later admit she liked him but didn't love him, marrying him for the money) Megazine 4.12 to 4.13 In 2124, his mother murdered him. By the time Dredd uncovered the truth, Mrs Sump had passed away. His last words had been "rosebud", triggered by a childhood memory ("I've got a rosebud and mummy loves me)". His widow and business partner mourned him as a lost friend, while anti-ugly compaigners celebrated his death. Megazine 4.13 Trivia Citizen Sump is an obvious pastiche of Citizen Kane: the idea had been suggested to Wagner by his editor. The story is also an inversion of Kane, with Sump being remembered as a good, generous man who wanted to help people. The famous scene where Kane angrily 'applauds' a terrible performance by his wife is inverted as Sump genuinely applauding a terrible performance by his wife, calling her "the best". Appearances *'Sob Story' - 2 episodes (2000AD, Progs 131 and 132 - 12 pages). Script: John Wagner, Artist: Ron Smith. * Otto Sump's Ugly Clinic - 3 episodes (Progs 186 to 188) Script: John Wagner, Artist: Ron Smith. * Who Killed Pug Ugly? - 1 episode (Prog 203) Script: John Wagner, Artist: Ron Smith. *'Get Smart' - 1 episode (2000AD, Prog 436 - 6 pages). Script: John Wagner/Alan Grant, Artist: Ron Smith. *'Citizen Sump' - 2 episodes (Judge Dredd Megazine, Megs 4.12 to 4.13 - 30 pages) Script: John Wagner, Artist: John Higgins, Letters: Tom Frame References Category:Characters Category:Judge Dredd Comics Category:Judge Dredd Comic Characters Category:Needs Infobox Category:Citizens